As soon as the bus door folded open I could hear him! “WOW! Looky here!” he shouted as I stepped on to the “no-step” bus. He was seated in the elevated front passenger seat, looking down at me. “A goddamn foreigner! And black, too! How goes it, brother? Haha! What the hell are you doing […]

When I was about 10 years old, and a student at a private school (I’ve touched on the nature of the school I attended several times in past posts) we had a protocol for answering questions. The teacher would pose a question like, “What is the product of 5 and 5?” (Yeah, they would word […]

It will come as no surprise to my readers that Junior high school students in Japan are required to wear a uniform to school every day. The uniform, among many other aspects of school life, promotes conformity and discourages that great Western deharmonizing plague: flagrant individuality. However, if you look closely at the students (and I wish I had […]